As technology moves forward at breakneck speed, we’ve got emulations for everything. We fill our hard drives with analogue synths, classic compressors and simulated tape decks, but there’s a division in the world of recreated music gear. While producers load their tracks with dusty-sounding processors and legendary channel strips, guitarists have been chugging away with entire studios full of world-beating virtual hardware, and the two rarely cross paths.
But when two worlds collide, everyone can benefit. If electronic producers can bridge the divide and make use of these axe-centric software solutions, there’s a whole new world of tone and effects to explore. Virtual amps may have been invented for guitars, but using them on other material can make your music stand out from the crowd.
Amp software has been evolving over the years, and there’s far more to them than just adding a lick of distortion. Therefore, over the next eight pages, we’re going to swap the virtual patch cables for virtual guitar leads and show you how to make the connection. We’ll show you the best software and how it works, and we’ve got video and audio files to expose how your beats, bass, vocals and more can be transformed using today’s top rig simulations.
Guitarists have used amps since the dawn of rock and roll, and for one main reason: to get louder. Originally, their purpose was to boost the volume of a guitar, simply to help people in the audience hear it.
As guitarists experimented, they pushed the loudness to its limits, eventually leading to distortion, which became a characteristic of both guitar sounds and of the amps built to make them sing. For recording, amps were miked up in the studio, and the characteristic of the room became part of the sound. With this added to the built-in spring reverbs, the sense of space and depth became part of the sonic signature of the guitar amplifier.
Effects pedals and stompboxes then came along, giving guitarists even more versatility to their sonic palettes.
All of these functions and features are emulated in the virtual amps of today, and with so much potential sound-shaping onboard, you can actually start to look at amp sims in a different light: as comprehensive multi-effects units. Whether you’re after saturation, distortion, reverb, chorus, modulation, delay or practically anything else, there’s an amp simulator waiting to make it happen, and crucially, it’s done in a creative, musical-sounding way rather than through a chain of faceless studio hardware boxes.
Amp simulator plugins can be entire collections of effects and modular playgrounds that electronic producers may be used to playing with in software packages like Reaktor or Reason.
You can look at an amplifier setup as two parts: the actual ‘amp’ heads itself, used to drive and color the sound; and the speaker ‘cabinet’ through which the sound is output. Each one of these stages adds its own specific tonal influence to the signal. An amp that brings the two together in one unit is known as a combo amp.
It’s not uncommon to make use of only one of the amp and cab processes during production, with either a ‘DI’ signal output from the amp, tapped off before anything hits the cabinet, or by piping an effected signal from a mixer into only the cabinet, for recording back once again with some added flavor.
Virtual amp software options, as you’d imagine, come in different shapes and sizes, suiting various philosophies for guitarists and for producers. When you’re selecting your amp of choice, don’t let appearances fool you – in studio recording setups, smaller amps are often chosen by top engineers and guitarists to provide the right tone for the situation, and in production, just because there’s a huge Marshall stack available to you, it doesn’t mean it’ll win out over a 15-watt Orange tube amp.
Whatever your poison, we’re about to take you on a quick ride through the options available in the world of software amps.
For software-based electronic musicians, the first port of call for any re-amping task will probably be one of the many virtual recreations of an amp setup. These are quicker and easier to use than hardware amps, and the results will be ready to fit straight into a track. Just like real amps, software recreations are primarily intended for guitarists, but the distinctive tonal opportunities they bring can enrich any electronic production, offering things that most ‘normal’ effects chains just don’t do.
If you’re heading down the virtual route with your re-amping quest, there are plenty of options from a vast number of developers hoping to sate your appetite for thick and lush tones. Software choices span the gamut from a few knobs on a basic interface to entire virtual studios with switchable amps, cabs, and foot pedals.
IK Multimedia’s Amplitube 4 is one of the latter, allowing you to create your own combinations of virtual amps and cabinets, add stompbox effects into the signal path, and record the whole lot with repositionable mics in a virtual room. The philosophy is one of ‘chop and change’, it’s a treasure trove of classic gear for the guitar-wielding purist, and it’ll cost you 180 Euros.
An option perhaps more suited to electronic production is Native Instruments’ Guitar Rig 5. Similar to Amplitube, this virtual studio lets you combine emulations of classic guitar gear to make your desired tone – although the emphasis is on distortion rather than clean amp models. Guitar Rig has much to offer producers too, with LFOs, envelope shapers, splitters, and sequencers among the stock of devices that can be added to the signal chain. It’s £169. For a more focused option, Softube’s Amp Room bundle combines three separate ‘Amp Room’ plugins: Vintage, Metal and Bass. These plugins don’t adhere to the ‘every amp and cabinet ever!’ blueprint, instead offering dedicated, focused modelling of a handful of classic rigs, with microphone choices and positions beautifully captured. Amp room is available for $329.
If you want an absolute classic, UAD’s Fender 55 Tweed Deluxe is the first officially endorsed emulation of this iconic combo amp, again with a selection of microphone types and positions. It costs £149 and requires UAD hardware to run.
Waves’ GTR3 is another mix-and-match guitar studio with a plethora of virtual models to connect together. This one doesn’t have to run as a plugin – you can use it stand alone or with Waves’ SoundGrid in order to wield its sounds hostless, should you wish, and all for $129.
For creamy amp tones on the go, check out Positive Grid’s Bias FX, which runs in desktop and iPad variants. It will integrate with the company’s amp-modelling hardware Bias Amp. The basic Bias FX pack costs $99 for desktop, with the iOS version priced at £19.99. There are expansions available too.
Overloud’s TH3 is also awash with emulations; 203 in total, with 69 guitar and three bass amps, alongside 35 guitar cabinets, 2 bass cabinets, stomp-boxes and multi-effects aplenty.
Still the options keep coming. Line 6 provides software-only versions of their Pod hardware, with the Pod Farm plugin suite currently at Version 2.5. Equally worthy of note are the hugely flexible Vandal from Magix-Audio which, despite its single guitar and amp emulation is hugely customizable, to produce a wide range of possible tones. Last, but by no means least, Peavey’s ReValver 4 software is equally tweakable, helping you produce all of the amp simulation flavors you could ever wish for.
This – by no means exhaustive – list shows just how popular software amp simulations have become in recent times. For producers seeking flexibility and sonic richness, the tools here provide an adventure playground of sonic possibilities.
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